Congressional Health Care Shell Game

Senate Democrats are quietly moving a bill to eliminate a planned 21% reduction in Medicare fees for doctors. This will add $247 billion to the deficit over the next ten years. The bill was very quietly introduced and set aside for swift floor action next week, rather than being sent to the Senate Finance Committee for public hearings as is normally the case. {http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091014/ap_on_go_co/us_doctor_dollars} This bill counter acts the majority of cuts to Medicaid found in the Baucus's America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009. {http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/106xx/doc10642/10-7-Baucus_letter.pdf} Those cuts amount to at least $184 billion from Medicare during the same 10 year time frame.

Mikey Kaus, of kausfiles.com a Slate.com blog would like to have,

Jonathan Cohn and Ezra Klein might productively explain a) Why this isn't a shell game, with Dems granting Medicare increases in one bill and then taking ostentatious credit for partly-offsetting cuts in a separate bill; b) Why Congress' unwillingness to put up with the scheduled Medicare doctors' cuts this year doesn't indicate that it won't put up with scheduled cuts in future years--that, as Megan McArdle among others argues, the projected Medicare cuts in Baucus' bill simply won't happen.

What remains to be seen is what the Senate Republicans are going to do...do they actually return to party roots and oppose these cuts which will increase the defict by a quarter of a trillion dollars per year? Or quietly go along. I'm betting on the latter.